Signal light trouble-shooting

[customh]

We have wired the signal light as appropriately as possible, but there is not voltage going through the red wire to terminal 5 on the solid state relay.
If anyone could help that would be great!

S.W.A.T. Team 2241
Coon Rapids High School

[robbrad]

First check your circuit. It the breaker closed? Is their a good fuse/breaker in the panel? If that checks out, use a multimeter to test for resistance between pins 5 and 1. This would tell you if the problem is internal. Mine has about 190k Ohms of resistance. Post your results.

[customh]

Well the issue isn't the breaker because we have the relay DIN-mounted and everything else running on PWM is getting power, and as far as we know (by the "Guidelines, Tips, and Good Practices" sheets) it is supposed to run off of a PWM. We have wired it per that and it does nothing.

[matthewsh]

Where do you have the PWM cable connected on your RC? It is supposed to connect to one of the team color connectors. I'm thinking that you might have connected it to the PWM connector on the RC. They updated the wiring diagram to show where it connects. You probably don't have the new version. Get it here...

http://www2.usfirst.org/2007comp/oth...L_LIGHT_R1.pdf

Matthew

[customh]

Nope, we have it in one of the Team Color ports. Also I checked that schematic, and that is exactly what we were wiring it per earlier today. Its like our team color ports are hosed.

[matthewsh]

Has the light lit up at all? Did you try connecting the light directly to a battery to check that it works?

EDIT: Nevermind. I understand better now. It sounds like something is wrong on the RC end. I'm thinking...

[customh]

I was thinking RC too, but we have had no other issues. We should have tried the light on straight power though, it is a very likely component to fail compared to other things. Have to check that on Monday, meanwhile, any other ideas?

[matthewsh]

Tell me if you agree on the following:

The white wire is power (+)
The red wire is the trigger for the relay
The black wire is ground (-)

Thats what I think is going on. I'm not sure what the individual pins for team color on the RC are. IFI does not reveal that in any of their documents.

We do know, however, that last year (and I assume this year) the channel you were on determined the color the diagnostic light would be. Either red or blue. Red is default. To get blue you had to be on channel 13 or 31. Perhaps you accidentally changed the channel? Thats one thing to check, although I think that is unlikely because I vaguely remember that you had to do something weird in order to change the channel. Hope that helps. I will try do some testing Monday.

[customh]

Apparently we tried the light and that works, and we have it wired right, other ideas?

[matthewsh]

Did you check to see that you are on channel 40? If so, try loading to latest version of the default code. I don't think anything in the user changeable code can control how those team color ports behave, but it is worth trying. Also, try connecting one of the old team color lights (that change from red to blue) and see if it lights up. If it does not light up, contact IFI. Let us know how it goes.

[matthewsh]

Are you on a rookie team? If so you obviously will not have an old team color light.

Take some pictures of what you have wired (get different angles of it) and upload them here.

Also, have you successfully ran your robot any? Does the RC work as it should other than the signal light problem?

[Mike Hendricks]

Originally Posted by matthewsh

We do know, however, that last year (and I assume this year) the channel you were on determined the color the diagnostic light would be. Either red or blue. Red is default. To get blue you had to be on channel 13 or 31. Perhaps you accidentally changed the channel? Thats one thing to check, although I think that is unlikely because I vaguely remember that you had to do something weird in order to change the channel. Hope that helps. I will try do some testing Monday.

MSB for the team number on the OI has to be changed to "1 / ON" indicating a high team number (off the top of my head, I don't know what it is, but I believe it is in the 3000's) Then you have to change the channel DIP switches on the OI into a specific sequence for the various channels. THEN you have to tether the RC to the OI and let it resync the team number. Finally, after all that you will be running on the secondary channels.

As for the red vs blue, I have a feeling that IFI changed the master code to reflect the new indicator. Keep in mind, at competition you have a 50% chance of getting on a blue channel.

As for getting your light to work, check that the relay is working correctly, and check your PWM cable (they DO fail). If you have a steady hand, you could use a voltmeter on the Team color pins and confirm that your RC is putting power to those ports.

If you know any teams around you, try contacting them and seeing if they have spare LED block from a previous year that you could borrow and confirm your RC is ok.

Having someone else double check your wiring and cable termination is also a good suggestion; not everything goes as planned when you're working late at night and mistakes do happen.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I am sure you have checked this but the Team LED jacks have five pins. Following the Tips and Guidelines be sure that "The PWM cable then plugs into one of the four Team Light 5–pin jacks on the RC with the Black wire on the Blk pin. Any excess PWM cabling needs to be secured into a harness and anchored to the chassis." The pins are extremely small and it's easy to be one pin off.
Another possibility is the solid state relay connections are touchy and it is easy to insert a wire so that the insulation is actually under the clamp when you tighten the hardware or the wire may have missed the connection altogether. Try removing the wires and reattaching both input and output. Without the LED attached you should be able to use a voltmeter to look at the output side of the relay and see +5 volts.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I am sure you have checked this but the Team LED jacks have five pins. Following the Tips and Guidelines be sure that "The PWM cable then plugs into one of the four Team Light 5–pin jacks on the RC with the Black wire on the Blk pin. Any excess PWM cabling needs to be secured into a harness and anchored to the chassis." The pins are extremely small and it's easy to be one pin off.
Another possibility is the solid state relay connections are touchy and it is easy to insert a wire so that the insulation is actually under the clamp when you tighten the hardware or the wire may have missed the connection altogether. Try removing the wires and reattaching both input and output. Without the LED attached you should be able to use a voltmeter to look at the output side of the relay and see +5 volts.

Al, my crew has tried all this and we still can't get the light to work. I'm not sure if we did the voltmeter check correctly, but we did get a value of +5 once. We also connected the light directly to the battery to make sure the light works and it does. Also, the little rectangular red light on the allen-bradey solid state relay has never gone on - is it supposed to? Also, given the schematic, position 2 (12) is currently unused. Is that correct?
I'm down to bad pwm or relay???? thoughts?

[Team 1967]

We are having the same issue with our signal light, however, when in the voltage setting on our volt meter, we get an output of 12 for all of the connections on the signal light. Has anyone occured this problem before?